What kind of day are you having today? Do you feel excited or anxious about the holiday break? What type of activities do you plan to do this weekend? These questions can be answered with more than words using the Moment AR app that has recently had a huge update. Moment AR, an augmented reality app using the Merge Cube as a tool for students with autism, mental health issues, language barriers, and developing social skills.
The pandemic has put a spotlight on some of the deep feelings we may have buried or are afraid to share publicly. There are other times when students don’t have the capabilities of sharing their emotions in the traditional method, making this app so powerful.
Kevin Chaja and his wife have developed an incredible resource to help school psychologists with assessment. The app centers on 3 main areas:
Student Response Time
Student Engagement
Comments per session
Some of the key features include emotions (anger, sad, happy, bored, disgust, fear plus sub emotions), actions (kick, run, etc.), social scenarios (interactions, support, encouragement), scaler (1-5 scale to identify low to extreme), and custom.
The custom feature was really interesting because it opens the doors for so many options. Using the custom module allows the students to build their own Merge Cube experiences by easily adding photos to the exterior of the cube. This is one of the simplest ways to customize a Merge Cube that I've seen, and it can be a powerful way for students to open up. Here is an example of my custom Merge Cube on the ARVRinEDU Advent Calendar.
The benefits of using the Moment AR app were noteworthy. Here are some of the results that Kevin and his wife found while conducting research on the application.
Student Response Time: Almost immediate, it consistently took less than one minute for a student to provide insightful and related feedback
Student Engagement: Students were engaged on average for more than 20 minutes, resulting in more than half of a counseling session
Comments Per Session: With such a level of student engagement, students were able to effectively provide meaningful feedback, averaging only 2.5 (related comments/feedback) before Moment AR and averaging 7.5 after using the app
To begin using Moment AR, get your Merge Cube and download the app. Don’t forget to follow Kevin on Twitter!